How to get the most out of Parents Evening

Have you ever attended your child’s parents evening and walked away feeling like you still have no clue about your child’s progress? Parents evening is a chance to find out everything you need about your child’s schooling, enabling you to praise them for the positives and work on the negatives. Make sure you get the most out of this one-on-one-time with the teacher by using our easy tips.

First up

Find out as much as possible about your school before you attend the parents evening – you don’t want to use up all your time asking generic questions about cashless catering and term dates when you could be asking about your child’s personal progress. If you have any issues or questions about the school, take them up with the head teacher in a separate discussion.

Childcare

This is your chance to have a one-on-one discussion with your child’s teacher and you’ll find it much easier without the children eavesdropping. If you can, organise childcare for the evening so you can talk without distractions.

Talk to your child

Before the night talk to your child and find out if they have any questions or concerns. This is an important part of merging home and school together seamlessly.

Take notes

It’s all too easy to leave your parents evening and suddenly think of a question you wish you’d asked. To avoid this, write down a list of all of the questions you want to ask, before you attend.

Check your child’s work

If you can, take a look through your child’s work beforehand, some schools will allow you to do so just before your appointment. This can often highlight things you would like to discuss.

Bigger issues

Try not to store issues up in your mind until parents evening, if there are any big issues you need to discuss with your child’s teacher do so as soon as possible. By proactively discussing your child’s progress/issues you can ensure that any problems are solved before they become larger issues.

Siblings

If you have two children taught by the same teacher make sure you discuss them separately and don’t compare them.

Home life

Try to give your child’s teacher an insight to their home life, the way they behave and their individual characteristics can be important factors that will help teachers. This is especially important for younger children.

Be positive

A fairly simple tip, but one that helps nonetheless. Ensuring that your appointment starts out positively will help to build a partnership with your child’s teacher.

About The Author

Helen is a mum to two, social media consultant, website editor and regular guest on Spanners BBC Cambridgeshire radio show. Since giving up being a business analyst when juggling travel, work and kids proved too complicated, she founded KiddyCharts so she could be with her kids, and use those grey cells at the same time. KiddyCharts works with big family brands (including travel) to help promote their services, as well as offering free resources to parents of kids under 10. She's happy to chat on anything parenting. She is also a part-time digital marketing analyst with Channel Mum. She can often be found hanging about on social media, and trying to avoid stepping on the Lego her kids keep leaving lying around.

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About Me

Helen Neale

Helen is a mum to two, digital marketer and website editor. She founded KiddyCharts in 2011 to enable her to work from home.

KiddyCharts is passionate about offering kids and parents its resources for FREE. KiddyCharts continues to make this possible because the site works with big family brands to promote relevant products to their audience.

Helen works part-time as a digital marketing analyst with Channel Mum.

Spare time is mostly spent trying to avoid stepping on the Lego her kids keep leaving lying around.